8/5/1885 - "No object seems to be too high or remote for human endeavour. It is not strange that some of these attempts should stagger the faith of all but the boldest imaginations. A notable example of this class is the famous etheric motor invented by Keely, of Philadelphia, and the subject of a communication which we [received] from a well-known American lady in Italy. The inventor claims to have found a new force, one that entirely transcends those that have been hitherto appropriated for human use. Heat, steam, electricity, magnetism are but crude antetypes of this new discovery. It is essentially the creator of these forces. It is scarcely less than the 'primum mobile.'

Indeed in reading the exposition of its potentialities one can hardly help doubting whether the concrete matter of our earth is not too weak and volatile to contain, restrain, and direct this vast cosmic energy except in infinitesimal proportions. How shall iron and steel stand before the power which builds up and clasps the very atoms of their mass? Where shall the inventor look for safety discs' to stay his new-found force, when every substance within his reach is but a residuum of the activity of his identical principle? How shall strength of materials avail against the power that gives, and indeed is, strength of materials? This, however, is but a metaphysical doubt, and as the invention has already demonstrated its practical efficiency on a small scale, there is a presumption that it may be extended to the higher degrees. At all events, whether the force can or cannot be harnessed to do the daily work of the world, the discovery is one that will mark an epoch in the progress of science and give the inventor and his patrons a meed of immortality. Granted they are but poets building a lofty cosmical rhyme, their work shall have not the less an enduring honour."